One thing I've been struggling with a bit recently is finishing the map design of the capital, particularly the castle. There's a lot of different rooms and floors in it, and I was rather overwhelmed by that work. Especially considering that we're missing a lot of tile artwork that we'd need to really give it an appealing aesthetic. I was mulling over this, and about the fact that Harrvah is HUGE for an opening town in a game. And that's when I got the following idea.

We'll just restrict access to a lot of the different areas in the castle and the town. Guards can be posted by the tower staircases to say "royal access only", or whatever. Homes can be simply locked or obstructed by debris. This will make the capital feel smaller, even though it's not. It also eases the burden on us to do the map design and scripting. So for now, I'm just going to focus on one area of the castle (the knight's barracks) and that should be enough for this development release. The other areas I'll just block off. Maybe as the official release gets closer we can open up another area or two if we have time/resources to do so, but I don't think it's strictly necessary either.

That's a nice idea. Though, it shouldn't feel like a linear map, at least in the official release. I think it's a big plus if the player can walk inside the town/castle and maybe can experience the stories/problems of other people in the city. That would make the whole thing very lively, but of course, as you said, it's a bunch of work to do.

I've begun using the "remastered" version of the desert home tileset to do some major remodeling of the capital map. It's looking pretty good so far (although I forgot how tedious map creation is with all the layers). Here's a before and after of the large inn right at the entrance to the capital.

As you can see, the repeatablitliy flaws in the ceilings and walls are no longer present. There's more variation in tiles. There's some nice additions such as patios and roof access. And perhaps best of all is that we can now build structures of different shapes quite easily.

This map redesign is going to take me quite a while to complete, but I'm confident that this effort is worth it. Player first impressions are important, and I want to make the first city map as good as I reasonably can. Plus this redesigned tileset will make future maps much easier to create.

This thread has been around for quite a while and even though there's still discussion to be had about this topic, i feel the older posts (that are wildly outdated) are misleading and a distraction. I'm going to close this thread up and open a new one to continue a more focused discussion.